Thursday, November 09, 2006

Moises Alou

I've long thought that Moises Alou was one of the most underrated players in the game. He's good. He rakes. The Mets are close to signing him for a 1 or 2 year deal for approximately $8M per. This is a bad idea.

Sign Alou, let Floyd go, and trade Milledge for pitching... seems to be the plan. This is why that's bad.

Alou is 40 years old. We already have a potent offense and a bad corner outfielder (Shawn Green) ... does this team need more offense? Does it need worse defense? Does it need to get older and remain more injury prone?

Alou played 96 games last year. He played 123 the year before. For his career, spanning 16 seasons, he's only played 1839 games out of a possible 2592. Not everyone is going to play every day, but this is 70%. That's not good.

Lastly, the comparison to Lastings Milledge. I love Milledge. He's REALLY GOOD. People dislike him because he's got an alleged attitude problem (which hasn't manifested at all) and the Mets are a likeable team in general with no villains. Gotta hate someone, don't you New York, you stupid assholes?

This is what Moises Alou was doing when he was Lastings' age and older:

He made his MLB debut at the age of 24, and was a rookie at 25, when he hit a whopping 8 home runs.

Lets compare Lastings. At the age of 20, Lastings batted .337 at AA, which is BETTER than Alou was at the age of 23. This season, Lastings batted .277 at AAA, and posted an on base percentage of .388, which is outstanding.

Lastings also put up a line of .241/.310/.380 in the Majors this season, which was far below what he was projected to do, while playing good defense outside of two boneheaded plays. But he's only 21.

Michael Tucker, on the other hand, who made the postseason roster, put up a line of .196/.378/.321 and played horrible defense. No complaints there.

This is all I'm saying- Alou was a great hitter with a great career... but the Mets will be lucky to get a full season of him, and even so, he doesn't address any of our areas of weakness (other than left handed pitching, which is a deeper analysis). He's old, and likely to underachieve if he does play.

On the other hand there is Lastings, who is free, young, and likely to have a fantastic career. He might not hit 24 homers this year, but if the Mets let him go, its going to be a horrible mistake. Maybe they can deal Lastings for great pitching, but he's horrendously undervalued right now and to trade him now and replace him with a 40 year old who only plays 70% of the time would be an egregious error.